Eight helicopters rushed search-and-recovery crew to assist the crew, whose capsule did not parachute onto the exact planned touchdown site due to a slight delay in procedures.

With the departure of the outgoing crew, NASA astronaut Kevin Ford has taken command of the space station, where he remains with Russian colleagues Oleg Novitsky and Yevgeny Tarelkin. They will be joined next month by NASA’s Tom Marshburn, Chris Hadfield of the Canadian Space Agency and Russia’s Roman Romanenko.

The Soyuz is the only means for international astronauts to reach the orbiting laboratory since the decommissioning of the US shuttle fleet last year.

Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide undocked from the space station on Sunday at 10:23am GMT to begin their return to Earth.

About 28 minutes before touchdown, the three modules of the Soyuz craft separated, leaving the 2.1m-tall capsule to begin its entry into orbit.

A series of parachutes deployed to bring the capsule to gentle floating speed.

Winds pulled the descent module on its side in the snowy terrain, which is a common occurrence, but the crew was nonetheless swiftly hoisted out by the recovery crew and lifted onto reclining chairs and swaddled in blankets to shield them from the minus-11°C temperature.

The chairs are designed to afford the astronauts comfortable acclimatization after months of living in gravity-free conditions.

Malenchenko has now spent 642 days in space, making him the sixth-most experienced space traveler in history. Williams has a spent a total of 322 days in space over two missions.

She and Hoshide conducted a crucial spacewalk earlier this month to work on a leaky radiator system outside the space station.

That took Williams’ total cumulative spacewalk time to 50 hours and 40 minutes — a record for a female astronaut.

NASA says the returning expedition conducted a range of scientific experiments while at the space station. These included testing radiation levels on the orbiting outpost, assessing the effects of microgravity on the spinal cord and investigating melting glaciers, seasonal changes and human impacts on the ecosystem.

The crew was to be taken to the town of Kostanai, from where Williams and Hoshide would board a Gulfstream jet for a trip to Houston, Texas.